Field
Example embodiments relate to a server room cooling apparatus and method using naturally occurring air, e.g. natural air to cool a server room.
Discussion of the Background
A server, a network device, an enterprise device, and similar devices included in a data center generate heat. Therefore, large facilities for cooling the generated heat may also be operated in the data center that operates such devices.
To cool the generated heat of the data center, providing cooler air to each device is required. For this, in general, a thermostat that generates cooler air is used.
However, energy consumed for operating the thermostat and facilities connected with the thermostat correspond to 50 through 60% of a total amount of power consumed in the data center.
Therefore, to reduce an amount of energy consumed by cooling the data center, a scheme that brings, into a server room, a cooler air from the outside of a building, e.g. naturally occurring cool air, and cools the heat of the device has been employed.
In this regard, Korean patent publication No. 10-2011-0069972 (date of the publication: Jun. 24, 2011), titled Cooling controlling apparatus and its method of internet data center, discloses comparing temperatures between inside air and outside air of the data center, performing a control operation so that the inside air is exhausted to the outside, and simultaneously, outside air flows into the data center when the temperature of the outside air is lower than the temperature of the inside air, and performing a control operation so that the inside air is cooled through a cooling element and flows into the inside of the data center, and simultaneously, an inflow of the outside air is blocked when the temperature of the outside air is higher than or equal to the temperature of the inside air.
However, the conventional cooling system does not provide sufficient improvement in reducing an amount of energy expended because a short period of time is allowed for cooling the data center using the outside air due to a characteristic requiring the data center to be perpetually or continuously operational and a large amount of air, and the system has a difficulty in maintaining an appropriate temperature or adjusting the humidity of the data center during a cooling process using outside air.
Also, due to an inflow of contaminant or pollutants, e.g., dust included in the outside air and the like, an error may occur in a device included in the data center.